


A Little Magical Assistance

by orphan_account



Category: 5 Seconds of Summer (Band)
Genre: Giggly!Unhelpful!Gryffindor!Ash and Cal, Harry Potter AU, Loner!Ravenclaw!Michael, Luke is really smart but really clumsy, M/M, Magic AU, Michael is kind of Luke's guardian angel, Nerd!Hufflepuff!Luke
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-17
Updated: 2014-09-10
Packaged: 2018-01-12 19:58:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1197558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Luke has known for a while that there is someone in the school watching over him and performing silent spells on him so he doesn’t miss the bottom stair and land on his face or lean too far over a banister only to fall and break his neck. It took him longer than it probably should to work it out, and, actually, Luke doesn’t actually realise himself until Ashton points out bluntly that you can only do a trip-fall-sprawl without actually touching the floor a few times before it’s obvious someone has their wand pointed at you, and it’s not just Peeves being abnormally friendly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Michael People Watches Luke

**Author's Note:**

> I don't even know what this is, it makes no sense. If I decide to continue, Michael will get his pretty hair colours, but he's just brunet in this chapter. Yeah...my head canon for Luke is that he's, like, really smart, but his brain is really jumpy, and he doesn't really know what to do with his stupidly long limbs so he's really clumsy and awkward?

The perks of sitting where he does at the Ravenclaw table, facing inwards towards the rest of the Great Hall, is he can see everything coming in and out of the hall so he’s never surprised by a screeching student or staff member erupting in during dinner to announce some new monster or evil overlord wannabe has come to kill them (not that that happens very often, only that one time when the Prefects’ bathroom got infested with Grindilows, but it was always good to be prepared), and the other is that Michael can people watch without being noticed because he conveniently kinda _has_ to face towards people. And by people watch, he means keeping an eye on a certain long-legged Hufflepuff who always seems to be either tripping over something or falling off things. It’s purely because Michael is concerned for the boy that he almost constantly has an eye on him, of course, and has nothing to do with the fact that he has pretty blue eyes and a black lip ring that is really distracting. Not at all.

The downside of sitting where he does at the Ravenclaw table is that he has the Slytherin table at his back, and there’s a group of particularly nasty boys in the year above who enjoy throwing food at him because he once dared stand up to them while they were tormenting younger students behind the greenhouses. In defence of Michael’s standoffish-loner reputation, he had been going for a walk to get away from the post-match Quidditch party-celebration-thing going on in the common room, and had heard someone crying, which, upon further investigation, had turned out to be a Gryffindor first year being hung upside down in mid-air while the burly seventh years picked through his robes for money and sweets like common bullies in a Muggle school. Michael may or may not have jinxed their asses all the way back to the castle entrance and then helped the poor boy back to Gryffindor Tower; no one saw, so no one could say.

Either way, at this particular moment in time, he’s midway through breakfast with one eye on the blonde Hufflepuff leaning back precariously in his seat to talk to his friends at the Gryffindor table, and the other on the goblet-turned-mirror next to his elbow so he could dodge any oatmeal or bacon that could be potentially flying his way. He’d rather not have to skip out on the end of breakfast to wash his hair. Again. 

On the other side of the hall, he sees the Hufflepuff begin to windmill his arms slightly as he loses his balance and starts pitching backwards. Michael rolls his eyes and gives his wand a little flick under the table, muttering a spell under his breath to slow the boy’s fall just enough that his blonde friend who never stops giggling has time to steady him. Movement out of the corner of his eye causes Michael to turn his head and he gets his wand up just in time to have a shield around his face as a lump of scrambled eggs flies towards him. And, of course, in-between dodging edible projectiles and being given detention for doing magic outside of class (even if McGonagall did give him praise for the mirror as he turned it back into a goblet), Michael misses the blonde Hufflepuff looking over at him, his mouth open as if he were about to say something. 

-

Luke has known for a while that there is someone in the school watching over him and performing silent spells on him so he doesn’t miss the bottom stair and land on his face or lean too far over a banister only to fall and break his neck. It took him longer than it probably should to work it out, and, actually, Luke doesn’t actually realise himself until Ashton points out bluntly that you can only do a trip-fall-sprawl without actually touching the floor a few times before it’s obvious someone has their wand pointed at you, and it’s not just Peeves being abnormally friendly.

Eventually, after a particularly nasty accident involving his sixth year Charms class, a mysterious and badly timed bludger, and Luke’s face had been averted all in the time Professor Flitwick struggled to get his wand out of the comically large sleeves of his robe, Luke realises that it must be a student looking out for him, and he decides to briefly forgo his education as they had no major or life-dependent exams so he can figure out who it is.

He first thinks that it must be either Ashton or Calum, but he shuts that thought down because both Gryffindors were more likely to worsen a situation that could potentially end with Luke in hilariously unfortunate situations than prevent them, and neither of them were particularly good at non-verbal magic. Scratch that, they were both hopeless at it, and if Luke hadn’t let them copy his essay on it, they both would have failed (and by ‘copy’ he means he did three separate essays and let Cal and Ash fight over which one they could lay claim to.)

It takes two days of chewing his piercing and sending pouty faces to Cal and Ash during breakfast, lunch, dinner, and from across the room during Defence Against the Dark Arts to get them to help him find his guardian angel. And incident where Luke somehow, _magically_ , only just avoided being crushed by a suit of armour on his way out of the Great Hall may have helped them make that decision. Especially when they didn’t hear the metal crash to the floor until after they’d walked out of sight.

“You’re pathetic,” Ashton tells him affectionately as Luke wraps him up in a full body cuddle in thanks. “You realise I’m only doing this because my life is in danger while I hang out with you because you’re so accident prone, right?”

Calum laughs loudly, and ducks his head when Madame Pince shushes him. “Yeah, I’d like to find this guy and ask if them if they can charm us to safety too next time Luke causes an avalanche of books because he couldn’t wait for someone to help him before pulling out the one at the bottom of the pile.”

Luke frowns at the dark haired boy. “That was one time, and no one even got hurt.”

“ _You_ didn’t get hurt because all the books suddenly flew three feet to the left and narrowly avoided crushing us,” Ashton says, booping Luke’s nose.

And, so, they joined forces and began systematically (read: making wild guesses and then yelling insults at each other) trying to pinpoint the person with the magic wand keeping dear Lukey from dying three times a day.

Ashton immediately rules out the Slytherins. “First, literally none of them would be caught dead helping a Hufflepuff, no offence Luke. Second, you have, like, one class with Slytherins, and who ever this person is, they’re in almost all your classes.”

“It’s gotta be a Ravenclaw then,” Calum deduces. “We’re not with you enough for it to be a Gryffindor.”

The two of them begin discussing it, but Luke isn’t listening. He heard ‘Ravenclaw’ and gets distracted thinking about brown hair and green eyes and shy smiles hidden behind black and blue robes. Luke doesn’t even know the guy’s name, but he’s been in most of Luke’s classes since first year. ‘Maybe it’s him,’ Luke thinks. He looks over to where Ash and Cal have started throwing paper balls at each other, then he looks further than that to where Madame Pince is walking towards them menacingly, and finally his eyes land on a table at the back of the library where the pretty Ravenclaw has his feet propped up on a chair and his head propped up on his hand and a book propped up on his bag as he lazily flicks through it. His wand is lying next to his elbow, within grabbing distance of the hand crossed over his chest, and Luke finds himself nodding. 

It could definitely be him.

“Why would it be him?” Ashton asks, and Luke guesses he must have said that out loud. The blonde and Cal are peering around the imposing figure of Madame Pince as she glares pointedly at them from a few feet away to the Ravenclaw boy. 

Luke shrugs, kicking his heels against the ground to get his chair back on two legs. There’s a dull thud as he hits the wooden bookshelf behind him, and then a sinister sliding noise as some rather large and hastily stacked books begin to slide off the shelf above Luke’s head. He glances up just in time to see a copy of ‘Hogwarts; A History’ that looks like it’s only been read once heading towards his face. He squeaks, squeezing his eyes shut and bracing for impact out of instinct. There’s a thump, and he peeks an eye open to see that the book has landed on the table squarely between Ashton and Calum’s shocked faces.

He glances wildly back at the Ravenclaw, but he’s still hiding behind his book. Luke feels momentarily disappointed until he sees the boy’s wand skittering across the table top like it had literally just been dropped.

Hmm.


	2. Ashton and Luke Go on an Adventure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I don't know what this is, I'm so sorry.

‘Stupid bloody Hufflepuff. Fucking idiot; clumsy ass,’ Michael’s train of thought is mainly along those lines as he slouches back to the Ravenclaw common room after the close call in the library. ‘Can’t he look after himself?’

In all honesty, he is completely freaking out because _holy shit there is no way the Hufflepuff didn’t realise it was Michael; he’s clumsy not stupid!_ He starts tugging at his fringe, a nervous habit he thinks he picked up from his mother’s house elf, and hitches his bag up a little higher as he begins the climb up the spiral stairs. He’s so focused on those stupidly pretty blue eyes and that stupidly hot lip ring that he misses the question the bronze eagle door-knocker asks him, and he blinks at it. “What?”

If a living lump of metal could look annoyed, then the eagle did as it repeats itself to Michael. “He who makes it doesn’t want it, he who wants it doesn’t need it, and he who needs it doesn’t know it. What is it?”

Michael is usually really good with the eagle’s riddles, but his brain sort of turned to mush when the Hufflepuff looked over at him, and the only answer he can come up with is “Duh,” which is probably the stupidest thing he’s ever said, including the time he told Professor Slughorn that the reason he was wandering the corridors at night had _nothing_ to do with the seventh year Slytherins still under the influence of the Bat Bogey Hex, and that he had actually been talking with Sir Cadogen. He cringes, as he does every time he thinks of that conversation, because literally _no-one_ talked to Sir Cadogen willingly. 

An irritated cough sounds from near his midriff, and he looks down at the eagle and start, because he’d forgotten it was there for a moment. Michael makes his brain focus and manages “A coffin,” before he’s back in Hufflepuff land. He swears he can hear the eagle cursing him out as he clambers into the common room.

You would think that it would be deadly silent in the Ravnclaw common room; they were the house of knowledge, after all, the school nerds who spent all their time studying. For the umpteenth time in his school career, and the eighth time that day, Michael wishes his house actually did live up to that stereotype, because he was hit with a barrage of noise when he came in and he’s still freaking out, and the exploding snap tournament that seems to be going on is really not helping. 

Grumbling lowly, he skulks past the rest of his house mates and goes up the narrow stairs to his dorm. He hits the door with a Muffliato and a Silencio charm, and then locks it for good measure; if the idiots he shares a dorm with think they’re going to be able to storm in at three in the morning, drunk as skunks, screaming like banshees, and demanding sleeping draughts and hangover cures immediately after waking him up, they have another thing coming. They can sleep in the stair well for all Michael cares.

He lies in bed and flicks his wand at the canopy of his bunk, sending little blue butterflies fluttering around. They land on his face and his arms and he mutters the counter-spell and they disappear. Turning on his side, he allows himself to actually, consciously think of the Hufflepuff boy he spends his day stalking, er, keeping an eye on, instead of starting with one thing and then blinking and finding himself at eyes and lips and soft-looking blonde hair. 

Michael is in love with the boy. He snorts to himself, because it’s ridiculous to be in love with someone when you don’t even know their name, but unfortunately for him, the heart wants what the heart wants, and his heart wants a currently nameless Hufflepuff with legs so long he doesn’t know what to do with them and a smile that could possibly melt the Black Lake during winter, and who apparently couldn’t stay upright in a vertical cage with no room to move in. 

The dorm door shakes with what Michael assumes is violent knocking, but his charms stop the noise from reaching him. “Fuck off!” he yells, rolling over and tugging the blankets around himself like a cocoon. He smirks slightly, glad that he can’t hear their responses, and closes his eyes.

-

Ashton makes it his personal mission to find out the name of Luke’s mystery protector, even though it’s nearly an hour past curfew. And, being Ashton, he _has_ to tell Luke this at midnight.

When something heavy suddenly lands on his bed, Luke screams and jerks awake, getting his ridiculously long legs tangled in his blankets, and then his bed curtains, and everything is a little confusing until he hits the ground with a thump. He stares up at the ceiling, dazed, and Ashton starts rolling around on Luke’s bed, laughing so hard his eyes are watering. Luke’s dorm mates let out various snorts and snores, they all roll over or fix their quilts, and they go back to sleep; Luke tips himself out of bed three or four times a week.

“How the hell did you get in here?” Luke hisses to Ashton as he tries to extract limbs from cloth.

Ashton giggles a bit more. “Through the door, duh.”

Luke rolls his eyes. “I meant how you got into the common room, dipshit.” He finally succeeds in disentangling himself from his bed clothes, and he lets out a triumphant “Ah-HA! Got you, you bastard!”

It’s Ashton’s turn to roll his eyes. “You’re adorable. And I got in through the door; the Hufflepuff password has been ‘password’ for, like, the last three years.”

Luke pouts a little, grumbling to himself as he gets up off the floor and curls up on the bed next to Ashton. “It’s not our fault the Fat Friar is drunk all the time in that painting. What are you doing here anyway? It’s, like…” he checks the clock on his bedside table. “Fuck, Ash! It’s nearly one in the morning, what the hell?”

Draping himself over Luke, Ashton giggles quietly in the blonde’s ear, his curls going everywhere. “I wanted to tell you something, Lukey.”

Sighing, Luke indulges the Gryffindor. “What, Ash?”

Ashton pauses. “Shit, I forgot.”

Luke growls. “Merlin, get out! I’m tired!” He shoves the shorter boy off his bed, and begins the process of recreating his blanket nest Ashton so rudely destroyed by jumping on him.

“No, no, I remember!” Ashton’s hand appears above the mattress near Luke’s navel. Luke sighs. His friends are idiots. Ashton point his finger like he’s about to impart some particularly important wisdom on Luke, and says. “I’m going to find out who your protector boy is!”

Luke groans. “Ash, we’re all going to find that out.”

Ashton scrambles up beside Luke. “No, I mean right now. I’m going to break into the Ravenclaw common room, and I’m not leaving until we find out his name, at least.”

“Who said anything about ‘we’?” Luke asks, turning his head slightly to look at the Gryffindor.

Ashton gives him his infamous ‘duh’ look. “I did. Duh.” See.

“I’m going to kill you in the morning,” Luke says semi-cheerfully as Ashton drags him out of bed.

-

The two boys stare, dumbfounded, at the bronze eagle door knocker. It regards them cooly, clicking its beak softly. “What?” Ashton wonders aloud.

It took them nearly half an hour to get from the Hufflepuff common room to the foot of the spiral stairs leading to the Ravenclaws’ because Ashton had decided it was time for a snack, and they had to make a pit stop in the kitchens. Then, they had climbed the stairs and came face-to-face with a rather angry looking metal eagle they had had to dare each other to knock. When Luke set his hand on it, and it had come to life under it, he had yelped and scuttled backwards, nearly resulting in his untimely death by killer-spiral stairs. Ashton grabs his wrist, though, and Luke can hear him muttering about ‘stupid long legs that can’t be controlled properly’. 

That was when they realised they had missed everything the bird was saying, and thus, they found themselves in their current predicament. It huffs at them like it has had to repeat itself already today, and spits out “Imagine you are in an ocean surrounded by hungry sharks. How do you get out alive?”

Ashton swears loudly. “Of course the fucking _Ravenclaws_ have to answer a riddle six times to get into the common room. They couldn’t have a password like every other house, could they?!” And then, to Luke’s disbelief, Ashton pulls out a scrap of parchment and a Muggle pencil and begins scribbling possible answers. The curly haired boy pokes his tongue out in concentration as he murmurs about swimming faster or shutting your eyes and preparing for death.

Luke contemplates what the bird has said, and answers it slowly, almost like he’s posing it as a question. “Stop imagining?” he guesses. Ashton’s snort turns into a gasp as the door swings open. 

“Of course smart-farty-Lukey gets the answer,” he grumbles good-naturedly as he pushes past Luke to enter the Ravenclaw common room.

“Don’t hate me ‘cause you ain’t me,” Luke respond, climbing in after Ashton. Naturally, he trips on the way in, and causes an almighty crash to resonate around the room. No one is there, thankfully, and he doesn’t seem to have woken anyone up, but he blushes anyway. They pick their way about halfway across the dark room with Ashton running into nearly as many items of furniture as Luke before one of them has the bright idea to create some light.

“Lumos,” Luke whispers, glad he’d thought to grab his wand as Ashton forcibly removed him from his bed-burrito. 

It’s a bit easier finding their way to the dormitory stair cases, and they soon learn to tell them apart when the stairs on the left turn into a slide the second Luke puts his foot on it. The staircase on the left also proves fruitless, because even though it’s obviously the boys’ stairs, there is a pile of sleeping teenagers Luke recognises from many of his classes sprawled all over each other in the stair well like they’d been locked out of their room.

Ashton discovers this when he puts his foot on someone’s face and wakes the boy up with an almighty “FUCK!”

They freeze and glance nervously at each other as all the Ravenclaw sixth year boys begin to stir, blinking groggily around and groaning in pain. Luke guesses they’re hungover from their blood-shot eyes and the overpowering stench of firewhiskey, and he takes a brief moment to appreciate that Ravenclaws aren’t as prissy and dainty as they seem, before Ashton grabs his elbow in a vice-like grip and tears off towards the exit.

“Hey, you guys aren’t in our house!” he hears one of the boys call out, but Ashton ignores him, shoving Luke through the door and nearly sending him flying down the stairs. They catch each other, and sprint as far away as they can.

“N-nox,” Luke stutters as they lean panting agains a wall. “You are an idiot, and I’m never listening to you again,” he growls. 

“ _I’m_ never listening to me again!” Ashton agrees before declaring that he’s kipping in Luke’s room for the rest of the night because it’s closer.

“You suck and I hate you,” Luke mutters as Ashton curls himself around him once they’re back in the Hufflepuff dormitories.

Ash ignores him. “You’re no Calum, but I think I can handle sleeping on you for one night.”

They lay in silence for a few minutes, and Luke is literally about to fall asleep when Ashton pipes up again. “Maybe you should just, you know, _talk_ to the guy tomorrow at breakfast.”

Luke throws Ashton out of bed and rolls over so he doesn’t have to put up with his pouty face. “The hell couldn’t you have thought of that an hour ago you moron?”

-

Luckily for the rest of his dorm mates, Michael is actually in a good mood when he gets up the next morning, and he actually has the decency to apologise for locking them out. He keeps the ‘Why did you sleep on the stairs instead of the couches?’ to himself, though. They respond by telling him about the two boys who broke into the common room last night.

“One was that giggly Gryffindor,” Nathan says, stretching hard enough to make his back audibly crack. “Ashton What’s-His-Name.”

“No clue who the other one was though,” Jaymi adds, his voice slightly muffled by the pillow he has his face buried in. “He was pretty cute though, lip ring and everything.”

Michael’s good mood vanishes, because _of course_ the blonde Hufflepuff had worked out Michael was being creepy and making magic at him, how could he not? He was smart enough to have landed in Ravenclaw if he wasn’t such a lovable dork (Ravenclaws tended to be quite mysterious and enigmatic; tall, cute, and bumbling didn’t quite fit in with the job description). He and his friend had probably come to confront Michael about it, though why they had to do it at sparrow’s fart was beyond Michael.

At breakfast, after he’s successfully dodged (deflected, repelled, _sent flying back into his fucking face_ ) and entire bowl of cereal from the Slytherins, he notices the Hufflepuff and his giggly friend, Ashton was it?, and their other dark haired friend all turned to face each other across the narrow aisle of floor separating their house table, heads bent inwards as they discus something that looks pretty serious.

He decides, ‘fuck it’, the boy already knows it’s him, he may as well go and introduce himself and apologise for his creepiness before he tries to find an envelope big enough to put himself in so he can send himself home in embarrassment. Standing up, Michael blinks at the toast crust that is suddenly occupying his seat, and he looks over his shoulder to see one of the Slytherins brushing crumbs off his chin. Shrugging, he discretely flicks his wand and blows up the guy’s pumpkin juice before heading over to the Hufflepuff table.

-

Cal and Ash are doing a really bang up job of psyching Luke up enough to go over and talk to pretty Ravenclaw boy. They’ve basically spent the entire morning either hurling insults at each other in a loving way, or hurling insults at Luke in a douchey way. Luke doesn’t even understand why he’s so nervous; it’s not like the boy is going to kill him, he’s only been saving Luke’s ass for the past who knows how long.

He must have said this out loud, again, because Cal turns his attention away from trying to thread orange pith into Ashton’s curls (Luke swears his friends are, like, five years old) and laughs at Luke. “Dude, you’ve totally been crushing on him for about six months.”

And that _really_ confuses Luke, because no he hasn’t. “No I haven’t.”

“Uh, yes you have. You’re always staring at him,” Ashton says, and Luke’s face turns beet red as he suddenly realises the truth of those horrid words. His eyes had always been drawn to the quiet, mysterious boy lately.

“Well, maybe I have,” he says defensively. “He’s pretty, with his big green eyes and his fringe, and I’m allowed to look, okay?”

Ash and Cal cack themselves. “Me thinks the lady doth protest too much,” Cal snorts, and Luke punches him in the shoulder. This causes a mini domino effect, consisting of Calum jerking backwards, his elbow colliding with a badly placed fork, and said fork being sent hurtling towards Luke’s neck, prongs forward.

Time pauses briefly for a second as Luke vaguely wonders if someone has actually put a curse on him, because so much more happens to him than what is usually caused by height-related clumsiness, and then he’s being hit in the neck by a flower.

Plucking the white daffodil out of his lap, he turns it over in his hands. “This was a fork,” he says stupidly. Cal and Ash are too busy gaping over Luke’s shoulder to pay him any attention. Luke turns to see what shiny thing has caught their tiny attentions now, and he balks and drops the flower as he drowns himself in intelligent green eyes.

The Ravenclaw blinks at him and Luke catches the end of a wand being tucked back into a sleeve. “Did you break into my common room last night?” is all he says.

Luke can’t do anything other than nod.


	3. Michael has a Hair Related Accident That is Actually All Luke's Fault

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shitty chapter is shitty, and for that I apologise. Dedicated to my Leprechaun, because I love her and she puts up with my weirdness.

“Calm down,” Cal sighs at Ashton as the curly haired boy flails his arms around and makes distressed noises in the back of his throat. “Let the two oblivious idiots communicate.”

Breakfast is still going on, and the Ravenclaw and Luke are still talking to each other, and Ashton is frustrated because it’s been ten minutes and Luke _still_ hasn’t brought up the fact that the Ravenclaw has been _magically saving his ass for two months!_ He doesn’t understand; that would have been the first thing he’d brought up after Luke had finished explaining about their little misadventure in the Ravenclaw common room last night.

He turns full around in his seat ant tells Calum this. Cal blinks and looks a little confused. “What ‘misadventure’?” he asks. “What did you-” Ashton starts whistling and looks away in the other direction. “ _Ash_ ,” Cal says warningly. “What did you force poor Lucas out of bed for this time?”

Ash rubs the back of his neck. “We may or may not have gone for a midnight jaunt up to the Ravenclaw common room to try and find hero-boy there.” At Cal’s disapproving expression, he holds his hands up defensively. “Hey, I said we _may not_ have. And besides, only, like, three people saw us, _and_ they were hungover.”

Cal drops his face into his hand. “You’re an idiot, you know that, right?” He glances up at Ashton. “You know you can be suspended for that, right? Or be put in detention with Filch for a month, or something equally horrible.”

Shrugging, Ashton pulls his bowl of porridge off the table and holds it up as he goes back to glaring at Luke and the Ravenclaw. The brunet boy has sat down next to Luke, and they look very deep in conversation. Luke is still fiddling with the fork-turned-flower, and he’s got a little blush on his face. Ashton realises he still doesn’t know the boy’s name, and he starts flapping his free hand around in Calum’s face. Cal mutters something Ash _thinks_ is ‘Why do I put up with this dick?’

“ _Caaaluuum_ ,” he whines around the oats in his mouth. “What’s the guy’s name?” Though it sounds more like ‘Ahs uh gs nam?’ and Cal rolls his eyes.

“How many times do I have to tell you to swallow before speaking?” he groans. “I don’t want to see your half-chewed food.”

“What his naaaaame?” Ash asks again, setting his empty bowl on top of the jug of milk. Something in the back of his brain tells him that that could potentially end really badly, but he’s used to tuning out the voice that sounds suspiciously like Luke’s mother.

“I don’t knooooow,” Cal mocks back at him. “Why don’t you aaaaask?”

Ash throws a spoon at the two boys to get their attention, and he supposes he shouldn’t be surprised when it suddenly turns into another daffodil and turns around in mid-air to come back and smack him in the face. He coughs around the mouthful of petals he now has while Cal bangs his fist on the table he’s laughing so hard. Spitting out the flower and wiping his mouth, he gives the Ravenclaw and appraising once-over. “You move fast,” he says seriously.

The boy shrugs, and Luke giggles next to him, like, and honest-to-Merlin giggle, and Ashton kind of wants to slap him because _just ask the fucker out already_. “I get things thrown at me a lot.” As if to demonstrate his point, a Slytherin walking out of the hall lobs an entire goblet of pumpkin juice at him. Ash doesn’t even see him move, but they’re suddenly surrounded by orange bubbles, and the kid has his wand out.

“The fuck?” he gapes. “Who the hell _are_ you?”

The Ravenclaw flicks his wand and the bubbles vanish as he tucks it away somewhere. “I’m Michael. Michael Clifford.”

-

“Hey, Michael!” Michael looks up, startled, from his potions text book. Someone is talking to him. People don’t talk to Michael. What is happening? “Wanna work together today?” It’s Luke, of course it’s Luke; people don’t talk to him much either. The Hufflepuff grins nervously down at Michael, toying with his lip piercing and hitching his bag up slightly, a faint blush on his cheeks.

Michael nods at him jerkily. “Okay,” and curses internally when he feels his own face heat up, and Michael is much paler than Luke, so it probably shows more. Luke beams at him though, and plops into the usually vacant seat next to Michael and he sets his stuff up.

“Oh!” he suddenly exclaims, sitting up straight so quickly that Michael barely has enough time to grab his shoulder and steady him before he over corrected and ended up on the cold stone floor of the dungeon. They both blink and blush, and Luke knows that Ashton would probably be forcing their faces together in a kiss if he was here. Michael lets him go. “Uhh,” he begins intelligently. “Thanks for, er, for stopping that massive parcel from, you know, falling on my head at lunch, yeah?” Luke says awkwardly, rubbing the back of his neck.

“No, no problem.” Michael is having a mild panic attack somewhere in the back of his mind, because this is the first time they’ve talked about Michael’s little (creepy) habit of, yeah, saving Luke from his own clumsiness and poor fortune to always be in the right place at the right time for something wrong to happen to him.

Talking to the Hufflepuff, to Luke, for the first time had definitely been nerve-wracking, but hadn’t been anywhere near as stressful or as embarrassing as Michael thought it could have been. For some strange reason he couldn’t fathom, he had expected to be naught but a mortified puddle of Michael three words into talking with the cute blonde boy. Instead, after they had swapped names, he found himself not just in a conversation with Luke, but _sitting at the Hufflepuff house table,_ having a _conversation_ with Luke.

It’s not like they even talked about anything important, certainly not Michael’s ‘little habbit’ thankfully, (though if the boiling kettle noises coming from Luke’s giggly friend were any indication, _he_ wanted them to talk about it), the just seemed to be able to talk to each other and carry a conversation without someone providing them with topic sentences, which was odd, considering they both had little to no people skills, and little to no friends apiece.

Professor Slughorn’s sudden and dramatic entrance pulls Michael away from memory lane and into the classroom where he then begins his opening lecture for the lesson.

They have to work in pairs to create a colour change potion that will only affect hair and fur. Michael gets a sinking feeling in his gut, something telling him there is going to be a mess in his near future. The adorably excited look Luke has on his face unfortunately confirms this feeling.

-

“What the fuck happened to your hair?” is the first thing Calum says to Michael when Luke drags him over to sit with him at the Hufflepuff table for dinner.

“Hello to you too,” Michael snaps back, a little self-conscious of the fact that his hair was now _the same fucking colour of the Ravenclaw Quidditch robes_. “Are you sure I’m allowed to sit here?” he tacks on, not particularly wanting to spend any longer in detention than he had to.

Ash waves a hand at him from where he’s already stuffing his face. “It’s no problem!” he says chirpily. “But the big question really is what happened to your hair?” And Michael blinks at him because the Gryffindor has a mouth full of what appears to be pork pie, and all he heard was ‘Nn prblm, bg qusn ‘s wha appen tya air?’

Cal thumps Ashton. “Chew and swallow before talking!” he says without even looking away from where he’s diligently cutting his own pie into reasonably sized pieces, as if he says it repeatedly every day.

Luke giggles as Ashton rolls his eyes and makes very exaggerated swallowing noises in Calum’s ear. “He says sitting here is fine, and he really wants to know why your hair is blue,” he translates, filling his plate with chicken strips.

Unfortunately for Ashton, Michael really doesn’t want to talk about his hair because he goes beet red in embarrassment just thinking about the incident that may or may not have involved Luke filling a flask with their colour changing potion in it to take up to Slughorn for marking, somehow managing to get his foot tangled in his chair leg, and the contents of the entire flask ending up all over Michael’s hair. Naturally, it was a semi-permanent potion with no reversing draught, so he had to wait for its effects to wear off. Which, he estimated, could take anywhere between tomorrow morning, and two months from now with several colour changes in-between.

Over the course of dinner, where Michael gets many a strange looks from Hufflepuffs and Gryffindor alike (though whether it’s because he’s not in Hufflepuff or because he has blue hair, he has no idea) Ash and Cali manage to wrangle the story out of Luke, who then apologises profusely to Michael until dessert arrives, and by the time they’ve completely gorged themselves on ice-cream and fruit pies, all four of them are laughing about it.

Michael says goodbye to Luke and the two Gryffindors when Luke goes left towards the kitchens and they go right towards the marble stairs once they’re in the Entrance Hall, and he goes straight ahead, planning on visiting the Owlery before he goes to bed.

In the dorm late that night, Nathan tells him that the Slytherin boys were very upset that they didn’t see him at dinner, and they resorted to lobbing food at him. Michael apologises, and helps him was the tomato soup out of his hair while he recounts what is now known as ‘The Epic Tale of Michael’s Magical Hair’ (though he leaves out Ash’s annotations about where in the story Luke and Michael should have kissed).

He stands in front of the mirror for a while after Nathan has turned in, and decides that he quite likes having blue hair, and that he also quite likes having friends. He mucks around for a bit, styling his hair in ways he’d never even considers before, and pretending that he’s some sort of Muggle celebrity – probably one of those rock stars with an electric guitar and tattoos and piercings – and if he maybe laughs and smiles at how dorky he’s being, the door is locked so no one has to know.

When he finally does crawl into bed, he’s still got a massive smile on his face, and he wonders why two idiotic Gryffindors who are seventeen times too loud for his tastes, and a socially awkward, clumsy Hufflepuff have had such a profoundly positive effect on him in less than twelve hours.

And again, if he dreams of holding large hands, and kissing pierced lips while running his fingers through blonde hair, no one has to know.


	4. Luke and Michael Get Their Shit Together

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know what? This chapter blows, but Muke/Clemmings kisses and Cashton fluff so...

The day Michael wakes up with pink hair is the day he realises he could, potentially, be stuck with this magic colour-change deal for a little longer than he thought, because, come on, it’s been _three months_ already, _change the fuck back!_

Blue had faded into an ice white Michael had quite liked, even if Ashton had spent nearly two weeks calling him ‘Snow Queen’, and then that had become an interesting mix of purple, blue, and pink, that apparently very accurately depicted the planetary movements for the month he had that. Michael then woke up with what he thought was his normal hair colour, but as soon as he turned on the bathroom light he discovered it was actually a blackish-purple combination Luke said made his eyes go ‘pop’. And there were so many more; black, green, black and white, lavender, aqua, orange… three months of not knowing what he’d wake up with.

After he’s finished freaking out, _Merlin this is so girly_ , and being made fun of by the boys in his dorm, _mate, you look like a girl,_ he snatches his wand up and magics himself a beanie out of a couch cushion which he then jams over the soft spikes of violently fluro pink hair. He sits at the Ravenclaw table for the first time in four weeks because he doesn’t think he can handle the entirety of breakfast with Ashton and Calum trying to come up with as many insulting names as they can.

He’s halfway through buttering his toast when there is suddenly someone sitting beside him, and he freaks out, _again_ , until he realises it’s only Luke. Michael breathes a sigh of relief and leans into the Hufflepuff’s side tiredly. Luke looks down at him, pouting in way that makes his lip ring stick out slightly, and it’s so distracting that Michael misses everything Luke says to him until the blonde is poking him in the side.

“Uh, Mikey?” he says, waving a large hand in front of the Ravenclaw’s face. “Luke to Mikey, are you listening?”

Michael blinks. Luke laughs. “What did you say?”

“I asked why you aren’t sitting with us, we miiiiiiss you,” he throws both his arms around Michael and crushes the slightly shorter boy to his chest. Michael whines in protest and paws at Luke’s arms, trying to make him let go. Luke giggles and tries to ruffle Michael’s hair through the beanie. “What’s your hair doing this morning?” he asks, moving to lift the beanie off.

The Ravenclaw squeaks out a ‘NO!’ and jams his hands on his head. “No,” he sulks. “Not here, I don’t want to give Cal and Ash any more reasons to take the piss out of me.”

“Okay, I’ll look later,” Luke easily agrees; anything to make the pretty Ravenclaw smile and lower his hands. He gets caught in those green eyes, and he realises Michael is just as lost in his, and, okay, they’re having _a moment._ They’ve been having lots of _moments_ lately, and Luke doesn’t quite know what to think about them other than that they him feel all warm and tingly inside. He suddenly realises their faces are a lot closer than they were a moment ago, and he can see all Michael’s freckles and the way his eyelashes are fluttering.

Then, of course, one of Michael’s Slythering friends lobs a well-aimed bowl of soggy cereal at Michael.

The boy gets his wand out in time to stop the bowl colliding with either his or Luke’s temples and it clatters to the floor, but they both get a warm, sludgy milk shower. Michael swears loudly and rips the dripping beanie off his head.

“Pink,” Luke gapes, and something oaty drips into his mouth.

Michael’s face goes the same colour as his hair as he clamps his hand around Luke’s wrist and drags him out of the hall so he can get to the nearest bathroom before the milk starts congealing on his robes.

They end up in Moaning Murtle’s bathroom because there are people in all the others and Michael is nearly in tears because he’s never had this much attention on him at one time. Murtle’s ear-jarring laughter greets them as he slams the door shut and he wipes furiously at his eyes because he’s _not fucking crying in front of Luke._

He rests his head on the door and waves a hand behind him. “Stick your head under the sink so you don’t spend the rest of the day smelling like off-milk” he murmurs to Luke. The blonde replies with a yes, and Michael hears him shuffling around until there’s a metallic clang and Luke starts swearing. The pink haired boy looks over his shoulder and sees Luke hopping around on one foot, clutching the toes of the foot off the ground, and Michael guesses he’s stubbed his toe on the drain panel that’s raised a little. Despite the fact that he still wants to cry because he hates being the centre of attention, he laughs quietly, because the Hufflepuff looks really confused, like he doesn’t quite realise what he’s done.

“You’re pathetic,” he says, trudging over to Luke.

Luke pouts at him. “Ash always tells me that,” he rubs over his toes. “Hurts.”

Michael taps Luke’s foot with his wand. “Episky.”

Luke yelps, then sets his foot gingerly back on the ground. “Oh, that’s better. Thanks Mikey,” and he smiles at Michael so brightly that something in the Ravenclaw’s chest twinges.

He tries to shrug it off. “No problems, now let’s get this crap out of your hair.”

Luke is silent as Michael washes his hair, lost in thoughts of green eyes and pink hair and pouty lips, and he stays like that as the Ravenclaw moves him to the side so he can strip his robe off and stick it under the tap. When he’s finished, he casts a drying charm over the both of them, and ruffles Luke’s hair affectionately.

“There you go,” he says, smiling. “Golden and fluffy once more.” When Luke does nothing more than blink at him cutely, Michael snaps his fingers in front of Luke’s nose. “Lukey, that’s where you say ‘thank you’.”

Luke doesn’t say ‘thank you’.

Luke kisses him.

-

“Hood, Irwin!” Professor McGonagall stops them both in the corridor when they’re on their way to Defence Against the Dark Arts.

Ashton instantly shrieks “I didn’t do it!” and dives behind Calum’s back. Calum rolls his eyes and McGonagall fixes them with an unimpressed glare. The curly haired boy peeks over Cal’s shoulder and skulks out from behind him.

“Ignoring the fact that that seems to be your automatic response, Irwin, have either of you seen Luke Hemmings or Michael Clifford this morning? Neither of them were in Transfiguration, and I know they usually eat breakfast with the two of you.”

Ash and Cal glance sideways at each other. “We haven’t seen them all morning; Luke went and sat with Mike at the Ravenclaw table,” Cal tells her, Ash nodding furiously at her.

She purses her lips. “Well, if you see either of them, tell them they both have detention tomorrow night.” And she walks away, radiating her usual aura of ‘I am queen, fear me.’

The two boys stand in silence for a moment, having a quick conversation with their eyes. “You don’t think they’ve finally got their shit together, do you?” Cal asks quietly.

“No,” Ash defies a little stubbornly. “They’re not allowed to. It hasn’t been four months yet; I’d owe you a galleon if they’ve got their shit together.” It suddenly gets very tense, and electricity sparks in their gazes. “They’ll need supervision in detention if they have got their shit together,” he begins slowly.

“And, if they _have_ got their shit together, as their best friends we should be the first to know,” Cal adds on.

Ash nods. “It’s not like we _need_ to go to Defence today.”

“I haven’t done the assignment, have you?”

They both laugh. “Of course not.”

They eye each other off. “RACE YOU TO FIND THEM!”

A passing ghost shushes them and they take off, giggling like maniacs.

Ashton is sick of looking for them fifteen minutes later. “They’ve vanished,” he whines, knocking his forehead on Cal’s shoulder repeatedly. “We’ve looked everywhere!” Well, sort of everywhere. They’d checked most of the bathrooms, and the kitchens.

Cal pushes him away affectionately. “There’s still the Owlery, the Astronomy tower, the Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw common rooms, the Prefect’s bathroom, the bathrooms on the first and second floors…”

“Ugh, shut up!” Ash groans, punching Cal gently in the shoulder. “Let’s check Moaning Murtle’s bathroom; it’s closest.”

-

“Holy fuck.” Ashton’s voice rings out in the silent bathroom.

“You owe me a galleon,” Calum murtters, his eyes wide.

Luke and Michael have both got deer-in-the-headlights eyes on, staring at the two Gryffindor boys. The Ravenclaw has his back to the wall, his legs sprawled out in front of him, and the gangly Hufflepuff is straddling his lap, his own ridiculously long legs bent awkwardly so his knees are bracketing Michael’s hips and his heels are brushing Michael’s knees, his toes pointing out in opposite directions. Luke has his hands all up in Michael’s achingly bright pink hair (Ashton makes a mental note to make fun of him for it later) and Michael has one arm wrapped around Luke’s waist, his other hand at the back of the boy’s neck.

They both have flushed cheeks and kiss bruised mouths; Michael’s lip is actually bleeding from Luke’s lip ring, and Luke’s shirt has been tugged down around his shoulder and there’s a suspicious bruise forming there.

“Well fuck me.” Ashton, eloquent as always.

Michael breaks the silence. “No thanks, I’m taken.”

It’s easy after that. They all laugh and Luke and Michael help each other off the floor, straightening clothes and hair and sheepishly facing their two friends. Luke seems to be trying to hide behind Michael, ducking down to hide his face in the Ravenclaw’s neck, his long fingers playing with the collar of Michael’s robe. Cal thinks it’s adorable.

They decide to head to lunch early, and Luke and Michael hold hands the whole way to the Great Hall, and they sit so close together at the Hufflepuff table Luke is practically back in Michael’s lap again.

“So what spurred this impromptu make-out session?” Ashton asks them over his enormous plate of sandwiches. “What were you doing in the bathroom anyway?”

Michael went the same colour of his hair. “We got food-bombed by some snakes and we went to get cleaned up.”

“And you ended up with your tongues down each other’s throats?” Cal has an incredulous look on his face. “Better not actually have to go to the bathroom together or you might end up having sex.”

Luke points a hot dog at him in an accusatory manner. “Pot, kettle, black,” he barks. “Fifth year, Christmas break. You and Ash promised to go and get hot chocolate from the kitchens with me after our snow ball fight, and you went to the bathrooms to get the snow out of your hair. I didn’t see you for _an hour and a half_ and Cal was walking funny for the rest of the day!”

Michael starts laughing so hard he chokes on his lasagne. “Oh my god, that’s epic.”

Blushing slightly, Cal buries his face in his hands. Ash just smirks, looking a little smug. “Was totally worth putting up with pouty Luke for the next six days.”

“Please stop talking,” Cal begs him.


	5. A Very Red End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is shitty. I'm sorry.

Life in Hogwarts became a routine of breakfasts and lunches and dinners, classes, Quidditch matches, detentions, and Hogsmede dates. And they were not cheesy enough to go on double dates, except they were, but only once or twice, and it was accidental anyway.

Michael’s hair had not returned to normal, and it was Christmas time. Something malevolent (and definitely named Ashton) was laughing at him, as he woke up on Christmas Day with hair so red it could possibly out-red a Gryffindor themed Christmas bauble when they’ve run out of gold paint.

Cal and Ash think it’s hilarious, and they spend most of breakfast trying to pin a white pom-pom to the back of his head so it looks like he’s wearing a Santa hat. Michael hexes their cereal bowls so that every time the two went for a mouthful, the bowls scooched a few inches away, until Ashton had chased his into Calum’s lap, and Cal’s ended up on the floor. (It almost ended up on Luke, but Michael took care of that.) Pouting, Cal flounces off to the bathroom to clean his pants off.

Luke kisses Michael’s temple. “I like your hair,” he says, “It’s better than the lime green, at least.”

Michael wrinkles his nose. The green had not been fun. His Slytherin friends took it as a personal insult that a _Ravenclaw_ was waltzing around in their precious house colour, as though they held the royalties to the colour green. Michael spent that whole week dodging food and avoiding walking alone in the corridors. “True.”

He sighs and knocks his head against Luke’s shoulder. “Cuddle me,” he demands, rubbing his nose against Luke’s collarbone. “I require affection.”

Giggling, Luke snuggles him with one arm and finishes his croissant with his other hand. “Your wish is my demand.”

-

Ash kidnaps Luke and Michael and forces them to spend the rest of the day in the Gryffindor Common Room. “I even got some of the House Elves to move your presents under our tree!” he chirps brightly, bouncing on the spot. Cal rolls his eyes, smiling at him fondly.

Michael grumbles and angry kitten grumble. “I’m _clashing_ with the walls!” he complains. “I’m completely the wrong shade of red, I’m going to have to leave.”

Luke pouts and pulls him down until they’re squashed ridiculously into an armchair made for one person half Luke’s giraffey size. They wriggle around until everything’s slotted together and nothing boney is poking into anything squishy.

“Are you two quite finished?” Cal asks, impatient to unwrap presents. He can’t really complain though; he’s allowed Ash to drape himself on top of him, and he’s got a mouthful of curls because the obnoxious fucker won’t move his head.

Michael gives a final hip-shift and tangles his legs with Luke’s. “Yes, okay. Now give me gifts.”

That’s when they discover the flaw in their seating arrangement. None of them want to move. They glance around, each daring the others to get up.

“Ashton,” Cal, Luke, and Michael all say.

“Aw, man,” Ashton whines, digging his elbow into Cal’s stomach as he sits up. Cal wheezes and kicks at his legs. “You guys suck.”

“Shut up,” Michael laughs. “Santa’s little helper.”

-

On New Year’s Eve, Michael and Luke sneak out of their Common Rooms and creep up to the Astronomy Tower so they can watch the seventh years set off illegal fireworks in peace. Luke practically drags Michael up the stairs he’s so eager to see the Katherine wheels and the Baby Birds.

“It’s nice to be alone for once,” Michael sighs happily, bumping his nose against Luke’s as the Hufflepuff gently pushes him up against the wall. “How the hell do you put up with that god forsaken laugh every day?”

Luke’s about to answer when said laugh is emitted quietly from a dark corner. “Oh fuck no,” Michael groans, squeezing his eyes shut.

“Shh,” Luke smiles. “I don’t think they’ve noticed us.” He inclines his head, and they can just make out Cal and Ash tangled together in the shadows.

“Oh yes we have,” Cal’s voice floats out. “You were louder than a herd of elephants coming up the stairs.”

Outside, the sky suddenly lights up in a shower of purple sparks, and the air is filled with the high pitched whistling of Baby Birds. A Kathrine wheel flashes past the window, and they can hear people whooping with delight far below them. With a great deal of noisy shifting, there’s a glint from the Cal-Ash Corner of Shadows as one of them produces a watch from somewhere. “Fifteen seconds until tomorrow.”

Michael gently grabs Luke’s chin and turns him away from the fireworks. “I can see the lights in your eyes,” Luke says dopily. “It’s pretty.”

Cal snorts. “Dork.”

“Shut up,” Michael says with a smile.

“-Five. Four. Three. Two-” echoes from around the school.

Luke kisses Michael softly. Cal and Ash…not so softly. More heavy petting than kissing. When Luke pulls back, he smiles slightly, and then frowns.

Michael giggles nervously. “Not what you want to see after your boyfriend kisses you.”

“Your…” Luke blinks, then reaches up and rubs his eyes. “Blimey, I’d nearly forgotten your natural hair colour was brown.”

Michael freezes. “Holy shit.”

(They may or may not brew up another batch of the colour change potion. Luke may or may not ‘accidentally’ spill it on Michael’s head. Michael may or may not miss the constant changing, so he may or may not complain about it afterwards. No one will ever know.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's All Folks! 
> 
> No, seriously. I am so sorry this was so shitty. I had a whole plan for this story, but I lost the motivation for it. So, this is what I had written, and maybe one day I'll write more. For now though, this is the end. Thank you all for reading. I hope you all enjoyed it.


End file.
